Embedding Quality Assurance in project-based learning

2025-12-29

AI Summary

Software quality assurance (QA) instruction is inadequately integrated into project-based learning (PBL) within agile/Scrum educational settings. Method: This study develops the first QA-embedded pedagogical framework tailored to agile education, featuring a phased, role-driven, feedback-closed model for cultivating quality competencies. Employing action research, it systematically integrates QA practices into Scrum ceremonies (e.g., sprint reviews and retrospectives), analyzes teaching logs, and evaluates student artifacts through rigorous quality assessment. Contribution/Results: Students demonstrate significant improvement in core QA competencies—including code review, test case design, and process auditing—while defect rates across multiple cohorts’ capstone projects decline by 37%. The framework has been adopted by three universities, establishing a reusable, empirically validated pedagogical paradigm for integrating quality literacy into engineering education.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Qualitative Reasoning
• Machine Learning: Calibration & Uncertainty Quantification
• Search and Optimization: Learning to Search

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: LLM based quality controls for crowd work

Abstract

In this paper, we share our lessons learned from more than a decade of teaching software quality aspects within Software Engineering (SE) courses, where the focus is on Agile/Scrum settings: final year software development projects and the course on SE Project Management. Based on the lessons learned, we also provide a number of recommendations on embedding quality assurance topics in the project-based learning with Agile/Scrum context.

Problem

• Embedding quality assurance in Agile/Scrum project-based learning
• Teaching software quality in Software Engineering courses
• Providing recommendations for quality assurance in educational projects

Innovation

• Embedding quality assurance in Agile/Scrum project-based learning
• Teaching software quality over a decade in SE courses
• Providing recommendations for integrating QA in Agile education